


Warming Up To Derek Hale

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: EmotionallyTraumatized!Derek, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Stylish!Stiles, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 05:11:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1375009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You wouldn't happen to know why he's like that, would you? I mean, you're like, the leading expert in the field of Derek Hale," Isaac tells him like it's general knowledge.</p><p>Stiles raises an eyebrow at him. 'I'm not sure that's a thing, but if it was, I don't think i'm that person. I don't know anything about Derek."</p><p>Isaac shakes his head. "No one knows anything about Derek. It just so happens that you can read him well enough for it to matter."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warming Up To Derek Hale

**Author's Note:**

> This is PART OF A SERIES, so read behind. Unbeta'ed. I just had to shell this out. It's 5am as I'm posting this. This is longer than usual. Enjoy!

Stiles, face crammed against his pillow, snores loudly, startling himself awake. He blinks with effort, eyes dry and heavy from sleep. A picture of his mundane room forms as he blinks repeatedly, and he blankly processes the carefully organized mess of it, straddling the line between wakeful awareness and rest. He's thankful that most of the year, Beacon Hills has overcast mornings, especially since the two windows of his room face north- and southeast, because it'd be a shitty day everyday if he woke to the sun slapping his face. He buries his nose deep into his pillow and almost goes back to sleep, when his alarm activates, startling him again.

"Oh, shit," he groans, while Stephen Fry speaks politely in the form of his Good Morning Sir Talking Alarm Clock. Contrary to what one might suppose about a bum like Stiles, he is a pretty light sleeper, and waking him up isn't as difficult. He might not have supersonic dog-hearing like Scott and the rest, but he's pretty easily agitated, what with the lingering weight of threat from God-knows-what always surrounding Beacon Hills.

He executes his morning routine the way he always does it--blundering through the house in an effort to wake himself up and get ready for school. He stubs his toe against the foot of his bed, swears to almighty Thor, tries to make his bed with his eyes shut, groans as his body stretches from its static state during the night, yawns, slaps himself a bit to get the blood flowing through his cold cheeks, lumbers into the bathroom, and does Stiles-y morning routine stuff. 

He showers, once again with his eyes closed, just soaping lazily in places easy enough to reach and letting the soap water that forms wash all the rest. He shampoos then tilts his head forward to wash the suds off. He steps out from under the showerhead and towels himself, again drying only the parts he could reach and generally not giving a fuck if he's dripping everywhere, and then ties said towel around his waist and faces the bathroom mirror. This is when he tries valiantly to wedge his eyes open and looks at himself, and his current state of dorkhood. 

He checks his armpits just coz, leans towards the mirror and inspects his face for any pimples or facial hair, smooths his hands over his perfectly not-toned, twinky bitch of a body, and grunts. Same old, same old. Except his hair is now partially covering his ears, and sopping past his eyebrows and hitting the bridge of his nose. He should do something about that, like maybe get a buzz cut again from the local barber's, but fuck it if he remembers any of that because it dawns on him suddenly that it's a Friday.

Friday. Tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards. He doesn't want this weekend to end, or so the ancient proverb goes.

Things go slightly out of routine from there because today is special, or so he thinks (read: or so he adamantly hopes).

He dries himself a little bit more diligently, because somehow he knows that water drying beneath his clothes creates this very, very faint yet unmistakably unpleasant smell, like laundry left out in the rain. He wouldn't be able to smell it even if he tried, but living in constant proximity to creatures with hyper dog-smelling capabilities had taught him to be extra mindful. He brushes his teeth with a bit more vigor than necessary, and swigs two caps of Lysterine instead of the perfunctory one. He combs his hair, because there's _hair_ now to comb and preens a bit and licks his lips at his cleaner appearance. If a man is not allowed to be lewd to himself in the bathroom during mornings, then where else is he? Then finally, an antiperspirant-deodorant stick. The first half of the function it promises doesn't always push through--sometimes, during extra stressful times, Stiles' armpits are wet despite its state of 'lavishly coated with deo'--but it does kill any germ that tries to live in his armpits, so Stiles smells ok.

He then goes back to his room, and dresses for the day. Lydia's comment on his lamentable fashion sense had left him slightly more self-conscious than his usual state of mega-self-consciousness, and so he ignores the hoodies and plaid shirts for a less thirteen-year-old-virgin look. Maybe he should go through his party Stiles outfits this time and look for a suitable shirt? Maybe. He contemplates this, spinning fantasies in his head of girls and boys just falling to his feet at the sight of his awesome gorgeousness, and he likes it so much that he does wear something a bit more tight and polished.

All in all, he's put more thought and effort into his personal aesthetics than all other mornings since the start of semester combined. He doesn't know if that's healthy or not, but frankly, he doesn't give a fuck because it's still too early to get the gears in his head grinding. Let the carnal desires of the people waft through the air in waves for him and his awesomeness.

His dad is predictably fast asleep. The Sheriff has this complicated sleep cycle going on where during the middle of the week he stays up a few hours later, reversing his body clock, which he then flips again during Sunday evening. It's so that he could do the night shift during Fridays, when shit is almost always happening the most.

So he ignores his dad, who will probably wake up in the afternoon, and swipes the keys to the Jeep off the hooks near the stairs, and runs out, dragging his lacrosse gear with his school backpack slung around one shoulder. It's pretty early, so he could actually go to a nearby diner for breakfast and coffee. His spirits perk up a bit more, since he loves the food service industry and the people who decided to make money by cooking for others. That way, he doesn't have to cook for himself, which entails having to make an effort so early in the morning.

Stiles sings to Nine in the Afternoon on the radio, because it's on, he knows the song, and he fucking can sing it. After parking his Jeep into a parking lot off Road 15, he stumbles into a lone diner, an 80's food place suspended in time, where the food's great and the coffee flows like it's milk and honey and he's in the Promised Land. He picks a booth and slides into it. Soon, a waitress entertains him.

"What can I get you, son?" the old maid of a waitress says in a raspy voice, hair up in a net and pen poised to write his order on a notepad. Stiles grins. He always gets more eggs when he grins.

"The breakfast special, Paloma, please," he chirps, fiddling with a piece of tissue in his hands because his hands have to have always something to do.

"Oh," she glances at him for mentioning her name, jots the order down, and then does a double-take. Stiles raises an eyebrow, and her eyes widen in recognition. "Oh! Stiles! I almost didn't recognize you. You're lookin' mighty fine today, young man," she says almost flirtatiously. It came from a forty something maid, but it counts, so Stiles preens slightly, but also blushes and ducks his head. 

"Aw shucks, I do not. But thanks," he says winningly, winking at her. She giggles and yells her order to the kitchen. Stiles feels immensely self-satisfied.

"I'll just go get your coffee, then, sonny boy," she says with one last lingering sticky look. Stiles couldn't find it within himself to be offended because, wow, that's never happened before. Maybe he should do the 'taking the effort to look decent' approach to mornings more often.

The diner's mostly empty, save for a truck driver wedged into a booth at the end of the room, snoring loudly behind a newspaper. Because everyone in school is big on getting their breakfasts from somewhere else other than home, being the lazy bums they are (like Stiles is) in the mornings, Stiles likes this particular diner because the road it's on trails away from Beacon Hills to some random interstate highway, and no one from school ever lives past it. Hence, no obnoxious cheerleaders or burly jocks to dampen his mood and ruin his day. Stiles could eat in peace, and eat as messily and plentifully as he can.

He hears the kitchen flare to life with frying. In the meantime, Stiles fishes out his spiral notebook to do some algebra, rummaging through his backpack for a pencil to use. Such is the life of Stiles, doing schoolwork in mundane intervals between existential pack crises. He downs the first cup of coffee the waitress gives him, after a loaded dose of sugar and cream, and doesn't miss a beat in figuring out systems of equations.

While answering a word problem (mentally laughing at the image of a school bus filled with children, in a collision course with a nuclear warhead) he hears the tinkle of the bell above the entrance that signifies its opening. Stiles looks up, because as much as it's schoolwork, he has the attention span of a goldfish and he'd rather be frolicking in a septic tank than solving for x at the moment.

He doesn't suck in a breath when he sees that it's Derek. He chokes on it.

The walking bundle of broody air and eyebrows is so distinctive that Stiles figures he could recognize Derek even if he entered in a full Barney costume. It takes all of 0.00005 seconds for Derek's eyes to hone in on him, like a falcon setting its eyes on a particularly absent-minded, might-as-well-be-dead squirrel, and Stiles stiffens.

Derek robotically sidles against the counter and says something to the waitress with a faintly sick expression, like the very idea of interacting with humans is giving him heart burn, and then nods jerkily at her when she repeats his order. Stiles' breath then hitches again when their eyes meet once more, and and Stiles is filled with panic as Derek makes his way over, like a living chess piece/statue from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Needless to say Stiles is inwardly freaking out, like an upside-down cockroach about to be bug sprayed.

"Derek!" he says, his voice _absolutely not didn't no way_ going up five octaves like his balls had just been squeezed by a monkey. "What brings you here?"

Derek looks as equally freaked out at seeing him as he is at seeing the werewolf, dropping into the booth Stiles is in like a cat falling into a tub of water.

The leather-clad man looks him up and down, mouth set in a thin line and eyes practically seething with the fires of hell. Stiles takes it all in stride and smiles, because this is like normal intensity Derek, no biggie, and he fakes obliviousness at Derek's predisposition.

Derek seems to be especially irritated at his choice of wardrobe today. He hopes he doesn't spontaneously combust under that gaze. He also hopes he's not twitching. Zeus knows his heart rate's through the roof already. He's sure Derek could pick it up with his sonar ears.

"Coffee," Derek grunts, finally settling into the cushions and relaxing a bit, redirecting his glare towards the table. He shrugs off the leather jacket with a huff. How profound, Stiles thinks, but he's more interested in the possible affronts the table had committed against Derek. More than that, Derek almost looks like he's _sulking_ , when his arms cross against his broad chest and his shoulders hitch, like a little boy deprived of video games or ice cream. Stiles feels affection suddenly surge in him, surprising himself. He can't resist the grin that blooms from his lips.

"What's up with you? You look like someone stole your favorite bone or something," Stiles says, placing an elbow on the table and dropping the side of his chin onto his knuckle in curiosity. The Alpha looks like the very definition of a sourwolf, and the thought makes him grin some more.

The werewolf growls, but it's a light growl that Stiles takes to mean annoyance. Derek doesn't immediately respond, but his eyes flit to Stiles' face for a few seconds, before dropping back down. Now he looks upset, and a bit more constipated than before.

Stiles lips turn down a bit. Was it something he did again? Stiles is left baffled. He always seems to do things that make more expressions come out of Derek than physically possible. He must be exponentially more emotion-inciting than other people, like a persistent hipster mosquito with a picket sign that says 'God is dead'. He thinks that that's the case, because it's a believable enough argument over his personality. Stiles knows he can get very annoying and tactless and overbearing; it's partially why he avoids other people--it's more for their sake than his.

"You look different," Derek mumbles after a sigh, so quiet the Stiles almost doesn't catch it. He leans in a bit more, just in case Derek continues to be uncharacteristically small.

Derek looks up, and Stiles has never noticed how blue the werewolf's eyes are. They're like clear glass orbs reflecting the sky, and, leveled into a steady gaze instead of a narrowed glare, they're like gates to another bluer-than-blue dimension.

"It--mm, it's good," Derek says, scratching at his stubble, and Stiles could tell that Derek is trying to be nice, but is falling horribly short, because he's still gruff scary. "You look good."

Stiles reddens, pulling back and scratching the side of his nose and harrumphing. Hair falls into his eyes and he remembers that he combed it today, and that his hair's probably ruined now that he's gone and run his hands through it.

"Oh, um, sure, ok," Stiles says, just so that there are _words_ being exchanged instead of gazes and exorbitant amounts of unjustifiable warmth. Why is Derek doing this? Why is he doing this? Stiles feels unfairly tortured. Derek is supposed to be slamming him somewhere, or threatening him with disembowelment. He's not supposed to be tolerating Stiles, and _engaging_.

"Pleasant day," Derek says, glowering a second after, like the words left a foul taste in his mouth.

Pleasant day? What was he? An 18th century matron? Stiles wants to hurl at the idea of Derek's social skills, at his attempt at making small-talk. It's all so stupidly endearing and sinfully awkward.

"Yeah," Stiles responds. "Verily." he adds, to break some of the coiling tension. Derek huffs, and Stiles is once again floored because there's a deliberate effort happening from Derek's side to be civil. Stiles gapes.

As if time had paused and then resumed, the waitress arrives with Stiles' food and Derek's coffee. The three of them spend an awkward amount of time exchanging glances, before the waitress backs away and returns to her station. Stiles eats his breakfast nervously, and Derek drinks coffee from his mug--black and bitter, Stiles supposes--with Stiles knowing fully well how insanely twilight zone it is to be in a diner with Derek and enjoying breakfast. They make some more small-talk than the mundane weather, which translates to Stiles talking with his mouth full and Derek nodding/shaking his head/glaring at his manners. They talk about the Cerberus from the previous night, school, the pack, and Derek's state of dress i.e. his leather jacket.

It's as if ... Stiles' heart stops. It's like they're on a date. Like, an out-of-nowhere date. Stiles almost chokes on a bacon strip. They're hanging out, eating together, making small talk, and Derek had complimented him, and Stiles had wondered about Derek's eyes. And _feelings_ were exchanged.

"Aksdgfkdjfg," Stiles says, brain shorting out. Derek's eyes widen slightly in alarm.

"What?" Derek says with a start.

Stiles swallows some of the food left in his mouth and shakes his head. "Nothing! It's nothing."

It's clearly not nothing, and he tries to finish his food quickly because things are getting out of hand in his head. He's suddenly noticing everything there is about Derek that he's often brushed aside in the past. Like how snug all his clothes are, or how striking he looks with a neutral expression. Things that, under normal circumstances--such as arguing with each other or trying to keep each other alive--Stiles wouldn't find the time to focus on. He catches himself stealing glances at Derek's collarbone, peeking out from the flaps of his dark baseball shirt. How prominent and imposing it is.

His gaze transfers to Derek's face, looking more peaceful and contemplative than he's seen it in forever.

"You should look like that more often," Stiles says before thinking, cringing at himself, before accepting that he'd already run his mouth. He breathes in, then decides to wing it. "You look, like, so much better without all the anger and resentment and worry lining your face."

Derek looks stunned, but sets down his coffee mug and frowns into it. "It's not something that comes naturally."

Stiles' chest tightens a bit. It sounds more depressing coming from Derek's own mouth, like he's got some sort of disease and he doesn't know what to do with it. Stiles always figured that Derek had been quiet and tacit even before the Hale fire, and that that tragedy in his life only shoved him deeper into seclusion. It makes Stiles wonder who Derek was before Kate Argent happened--if he had an enthusiastic, carefree side, and if he ever grinned to his ears and laughed crazily.

Stiles wonders, for the first time, how much Derek has truly lost, and how Derek's coping with it. It makes him feel like all he had been doing was standing there the whole time, worthless and apathetic, while Derek took care of all of them like like he owed them, and it makes him want to reach out and do something.

Stiles sets his fork down and wipes his mouth with a tissue, resolve forming as he next downs the last of his orange juice. He stuffs his school things back in his bag and pulls himself out of the booth. Derek's staring at him with a look that Stiles would guess is confused.

Stiles smiles as he threads an arm through a backpack strap. "We're still on for tonight, right?"

Derek eyebrows shoot up, and Stiles' smile widens to a cheeky grin, because Derek's eyebrows had almost disappeared, and he hasn't even transformed.

"I--yes. If it's ok with you," Derek says with yet another stunned expression.

"Great!" Stiles slaps down some money onto the counter for his food, and looks back at Derek. "Nippon Mania, 7:30. Don't be late!"

He then zooms out of the diner as fast as a satiated teen can without throwing up, throwing a careless grin and a wave over his shoulder.

He drives to school with his heart pummeling in his chest, his cheeks flushed in exhilaration.

***

Stiles couldn't be in any more of an unfashionable company than he is at the moment. He's at the side lines of lacrosse practice, watching Scott assist in drilling the others with Finstock. Beside him is Isaac, who, although is first string, is too lazy to practice. He wants to ditch because he's not getting any practice anyway, and he seriously, honestly needs Danny or Lydia right now because he has no idea what the hell he should do for tonight.

Isaac glances at him and squints. "Are you ok? You look kind of ok, except your heart's thumping like you got your leg cut off. And your fingers are drumming too much."

Stiles sucks in a breath. "Fine. Just fine. Not like I'm nervous or anything."

Isaac, glances at him, then shakes his head. "What is _up_ with everyone these days? You're being all weird like Derek."

Stiles whips his head so fast and gapes. "Wha--Derek? What do you mean?"

Isaac chuckles. "Dude, living with Derek's been ... hilarious lately, to say the least."

Stiles looks surprised at this. "How?"

Isaac looks back to the field and snorts. "I walked in on him glaring murderously between two ties. I think he was trying to see which tie would turn white in fear."

"Dude, like seriously? That's freaky," he says, silently creating a picture of Derek in his head.

Isaac nods his acquiescence. "I literally have not seen him so out of it. He was doing laundry this morning. Like, at 4 a.m. It was spooky, because Erica and I usually take turns doing that during the weekend, not in the middle of the night like a fugitive, but there he was, in the basement, trying to figure out the washing machine by scowling at it menacingly. And what's more, he was only washing one shirt, a dark blue one that looked small on him, and he used a ton of laundry detergent. I think he poured half of it in by accident. Anyway, he came back to a very sudsy basement after a few minutes."

Stiles can't help it; he laughs, an explosive bark of laughter that has him clutching at his stomach and sides. he wipes at his eyes as his laughter dies down, insides swelling with bubbly warmth and making him grin.

"What I would pay to see a scene like that," Stiles says with a chuckle, buoyed by the idea that Derek might just be as nervous as he is. He runs a hand through his hair, his spirits visibly uplifted. He's never felt so giddy about anything before, and the feeling's so sickeningly good that he's bundle of energy and hyperactivity.

"You wouldn't happen to know why he's like that, would you? I mean, you're like, the leading expert in the field of Derek Hale," Isaac tells him like it's general knowledge.

Stiles raises an eyebrow at him. 'I'm not sure that's a thing, but if it was, I don't think i'm that person. I don't know anything about Derek."

Isaac shakes his head. "No one knows anything about Derek. It just so happens that you can read him well enough for it to matter."

Stiles ruminates over that revelation until practice ends. He hasn't thought about what everyone else thinks about Derek's reluctance to share anything about his life, but he's even more flummoxed with Isaac's quiet confidence in labeling him a Derek expert. It's not that Derek's easy to read--sometimes, Stiles just understands. He understands the concept of shouldering a lot of responsibilities. He's watched his dad enough to realize that the loss of his mom had given his dad so many responsibilities to consider and think about, in particular a hyperactive child and his future. And Stiles isn't a stranger to grief and mourning. He knows the feeling of wanting someone there beside him, but having his wishes cut short because they can't be there ever again.

He knows that pulling someone out of the dark is a difficult task. He and his dad had each other, the both of them picking each other up and compensating for the other's shortcomings. Derek Hale had no one but an estranged, psychotic uncle, who is just as traumatized as he is. Stiles knows that anyone who's been through the loss of a loved one learned how to grasp at anything worth hoping for, anything that makes the days that go by a little less gray. And if he's helping bring out things in Derek that had been long buried in ashes, then he wouldn't be able to stop reading Derek even if he tries.

***

6 p.m. Stiles is about to shit himself in anxiety. He's sorely tempted to take an Aderall, but fears the ramifications of drugging it up so close to the actual date.

Date. He's going on a _date_ with Derek Hale. If someone had told him that he would be going to a Japanese Restaurant with Derek Hale back during the semester he met the werewolf, he would have looked at the person like he was a whack-job. It seemed so impossible all those months ago, but something had definitely changed between the two of them. Stiles certainly trusts the werewolf now, and feels like he could outwit any beast ever that existed so long as he had Derek by his side. Somehow, Derek has his own motivations, and Stiles is terrified of knowing what they are.

He's in his room, sitting by the side of his bed wearing only boxers and fidgeting uncontrollably, the screen on his cellphone smudged with thumb-sweat from checking it so much. Lydia was supposed to arrive an hour ago to help him prepare for the big night, but she's late, and Stiles is seriously going to soil himself.

He jumps off his ass when his dad knocks on his open door to call his attention.

"Jesus! Dad, don't scare me like that," Stiles says, covering himself with the towel wrapped around his neck.

"Sorry, kid. You have a visitor--uh, I think you should've gotten dressed ages ago, because she looks about ready to go," he says with a sly smile.

Stiles wants to laugh, but finds that he might throw up in front of his dad if he does. "Er, dad. Lydia's a friend. It's no longer a thing."

His dad raises an eyebrow. "Really? Well that's odd. Lydia Martin's been your crush long before you learned to touch yourself."

Lydia Martin chooses that time and opportunity to saunter into the room with a ton of shopping bags, making father and son sport twin blushes of embarrassment. Lydia shrugs, dumping everything on Stiles' bed.

"That's ok, Sheriff. It wasn't exactly a secret. Stiles here once proposed to me with a ring pop wet with his saliva," Lydia says offhandedly, embarrassing Stiles further. "He's over it. in fact, he's actually going on a date tonight."

The Sheriff's head snaps towards his direction in surprise, and a little bit disbelief, like he can't believe his son's dating material. Stiles doesn't know whether to be mortified or indignant. "Oh, is he now?" He turns to Stiles. "I didn't know, son. Why haven't you told your old man about this?"

Lydia flashes the older man a brilliant smile. "Oh, that's easy. He hasn't told you because he's going on a date with D--"

"DAD," Stiles interrupts, launching to his feet and heading towards the door. "I think you should go, I really need to get dressed up."

His dad trains a mildly suspicious look at him. "You will tell me about her soon, though? I don't like being left out of your life, you know."

Stiles means to close the door, but freezes for a moment, staring at the Sheriff with a conflicted expression. He can't exactly lie to his dad about this, but then again, it's too early to say whether Derek's sticking around, so he settles for the less explosive truth of the situation instead.

"It's not really a girl, dad," he says meekly, before closing the door on his dad's shocked expression.

"That was hell, you evil, evil girl," Stiles tells Lydia, who has already started laying out different kinds of outfits for Stiles to try out.

"I don't care, Stilinski. Just get over here and let me dress you to perfection," she says silkily, and any other time in the past Stiles would have gotten aroused at the idea of Lydia begging him closer, but somehow Lydia's turned into a 'just a friend' kind of person in his life, a very close friend who's human and caught up in the dynamics of a wolf pack just like he is. Stiles, like his dad, doesn't know when his obsessive affections for the girl diffused into a solid camaraderie, but doesn't have time to seriously mull over it.

He's too focused on the dread threatening to consume him at the thought of Lydia Martin using him as a live mannequin.

***

Derek's gripping the steering wheel so firmly that it's pliant in his palms. He's making doubly sure that he doesn't go over the speed limit, his foot keeping the Camaro's velocity at a solid 34kmph pace. He doesn't know why he's putting himself through this, why he'd put himself through this for the better part of the week, why the words had left his mouth that night Stiles had crawled through his window.

Like most of his wild decisions, he had dived into this out of pure instinct. The fireball from the pyromancer had shaken him to the very core, made the animal inside him howl out and cry for the spastic human on the verge of burning to ashes. His muscles almost moved of their own accord, releasing an enormous amount of strength to propel him between the fireball and Stiles. It had surprised him, in hindsight, how easily willing his body had been-- _is_ , still--to keep Stiles out of harm's way. It had been a sort of enlightenment, a defogging of his mind and his motivations. Everything seemed countless shades clearer than before, and before he knew it, he had again acted on instinct, by asking Stiles to the first restaurant that came to mind.

He had spent the better part of the week jumping between regretting his decision and accepting it and back, his wolf unsure whether to feel thrilled and hyped, or terrified and reproachful.

Derek had since been resigned to going through with the dinner, encouraged further by their little stint in the diner. Stiles had looked ... well, Stiles had looked _different_. Good, like he had said, because that's the only description of Stiles he's allowing himself to say. Stiles had looked good, and smelled good, and just felt good to be around with, that Derek almost hated it. He hates how Stiles is under his skin without his permission. But at the same time, his body thrums with the proximity of Stiles, his wolf feeling more and more settled and content with every occasion they spend together. His emotions, which were often left hanging dry and unexplored, needed evaluating, lest it consumes him and confuses him further. Dinner had proved to be a perfect choice to just submerge himself head first into Stiles' world. See what Stiles was really like.

In the end, he was looking forward to it, even going so far as buying some suitably formal apparel for the said occasion. It was a kind of indulgence that he's never really put himself through ever since things changed for the worse, and it made him feel more purged than before.

Through the street where the restaurant is found, Derek finds Stiles' jeep, parked near a parking meter. Stiles is here already, he thinks, silently pleased that their agreement to not be late had been fulfilled on Stiles' end.

What makes his heart drop to his seat, however, is the smoke that billows in the air and fills the street, and the sirens wailing in the distance. _Fire_ , Derek concludes, eyes turning red, nostrils flaring, and jaw tightening. He doesn't bother parking, just shoots out of the Camaro door, breaking into a fierce run, tearing through the street where people are running and panicking and crying. He's praying relentlessly in his head, pleading to whoever's out there who's listening for things to not be what he fears they are.The dread settles into his veins like a vicegrips, making his worst nightmares come flaring to life.

He turns a corner, and freezes on the spot. Nippon Mania is in flames, and Stiles, Stiles--

_"Nippon Mania, 7:30. Don't be late!"_

Stiles stayed true to his word.


End file.
